Too many things going on these days for much blogging. Pessach is only one of them. Anyway, an Irish reader (Connor) sent me a link which tells that The Irish Times is as bad as the Guardian. Though why they care, one way or the other, is beyond me. They're at one end of Europe, we're beyond the edge of the opposite end, and they're the local newspaper of a small country, without pretensions to be a global brand. Why care about Israel, of all places?
Ah, I hear you asking, and why does CAMERA care about some Irish newspaper? Perhaps because they're from Boston....
The answer to your question is perhaps the same as to why the University College of Cork branch of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign should have a massive "PIWP" database of more than 100,000 (!) Israel-bashing items.
ReplyDeleteSee here, here, and here.
Many reasons for the disproportionate Irish interest in this conflict.
ReplyDeleteMost importantly, we have traditionally liked to view ourselves as 'the Blacks' of Europe - it's not a big jump to viewing our selves as 'the Palestinians' of Europe, especially when you consider the many (ultimately superficial) similarities between the Northern Ireland conflict and your own.
In West Belfast estates and elsewhere, Nationalist (Catholic) neighbourhoods fly Palestinian flags, while Loyalist (Protestant) neighbourhoods fly Israeli flags. See this link for an example of pro-Palestinian imagery in the nationalist Falls Road area of Belfast - http://www.flickr.com/photos/10960281@N03/3360064139/
More recently, with the apparently peaceful and successful conclusion to our conflict, we like to think we have something to teach the rest of the world about getting along. See Gerry Adams upcoming visit to the M/E. (and see this article by Sean Gannon on the fallacy of such a notion - http://www.peace-security-council.org/articles.asp?id=495)
MacLeinn.
And see this:
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7991311.stm